Wanted: Dead kicks off with a bang, as you leave a trail of severed limbs in your wake, bring a katana to a giant spider mech fight, then top everything off with a ramen-eating contest that plays like an increasingly difficult rhythm game.
Developer Soleil’s latest project foregoes excessive polish for an unusual mixture of gameplay elements while delivering bewildering tonal shifts in terms of dialogue and narrative, all of them deliberate.
In one cutscene, protagonist Hannah Stone is covered in blood; in the next, she’s being chummy with her coworker who’s a weapons expert and rather fond of carrying around a fluffy cat.
Then, everything seamlessly transitions to a slice of anime delving into dramatic portions of Hannah’s past before setting off on her next mission.
Wanted: Dead’s combat is a weird mixture of jank and style. There’s cover-based shooting, but the limited amount of ammo inevitably sees you frantically sprinting past bullets and using your katana to slice and dice foes.
Hannah uses both a handgun and sword for her few combos, parries, and counters, all of them supported by fluid, occasionally flashy execution animations. But making sense of the chaos around you isn’t always easy.
Wanted: Dead’s fights don’t have a set rhythm, leading to deaths that feel arbitrary. You have a limited supply of healing kits alongside a team of AI companions able to distract opponents and resurrect you once per checkpoint.
Your path is obstructed by numerous deadly enemies. However, whether they will target your allies, providing you with an opportunity to control the fight, or make things more difficult for you, seems to be determined by chance.
Dying in two or three strikes to a cyborg ninja is a learning experience, as opposed to attacks you can’t see coming or react to, especially while wielding possibly the clunkiest chainsaw in video game history.
Wanted: Dead’s old-school checkpoint placement also fuels frustration due to how you end up repeating entire sections before getting to the one bit that gives you trouble. Overcoming obstacles doesn’t feel like truly mastering Hannah’s fighting style, either, and parrying proves to be a Sisyphean task.
Getting past a tougher section often feels like the result of sheer luck rather than a new upgrade bought using skill points earned through slaughter or a better understanding of how enemies fight. Wanted: Dead is a bit of a rollercoaster difficulty-wise, too, jarringly throwing you out of your element just when you think you had things figured out.
I kept pushing forward just to see how weird it could all get, as there aren’t that many titles that have you grabbing plushies with a mechanical claw, eating ramen, singing karaoke, or playing an actual retro side-scrolling shooter in between sessions of stylish carnage.
But, while I can appreciate what it does, Wanted: Dead’s unusual mix of gameplay elements and tonal shifts didn’t ultimately click with me.
The latter, in particular, are very hit or miss, while the lack of polish, difficulty, and general ramshackle nature of the game won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
If the madness of it all grabs you, there’s a good chance you’ll find it easy to overlook all its missteps and revel in the chaos.
Keep updated on the latest PC Gaming news by following GameWatcher on Twitter, checking out our videos on YouTube, giving us a like on Facebook, and joining us on Discord. We may also include links to affiliate stores, which gives us a small commission if you purchase anything via them. Thank you.
